Palacký University Placed in the Shanghai Ranking for the First Time

Illustrational photo: Ota Blahoušek

friday 25. august 2017, 13:19 - Text: Martina Šaradínová

Palacký University has been placed on the prestigious Academic Ranking of World Universities (ARWU, or Shanghai Ranking) for the first time, entering between the 601st and 700th places. It joins Masaryk University and Czech Technical University in Prague in the same category, with Charles University in Prague placing in the category between the 201st and 300th places. The Shanghai Ranking is equivalent to the THE World University Rankings and the QS World University Rankings in prestige.

“In a way, we have achieved our partial goal, which was to place UP into the most prestigious global university rankings. It shows that despite the differing evaluation methods of the various rankings, our university is improving by all basic indicators. This is also shown by the fact that international partners are turning to us for cooperation in greater numbers,” said UP Rector Jaroslav Miller.

The ARWU ranking is the oldest international university ranking, first published in 2003. It was originally produced by Shanghai University and since 2009 it has been published by the Shanghai Ranking Consultancy company. This year, in addition to its TOP 500 universities, it also compiled a list of universities placing from the 501st to 800th positions.

Palacký University scored mainly for physics and agricultural science

In addition to the global evaluation, universities were ranked according to 52 subjects in natural sciences, technical sciences, environmental sciences, medicine, and social sciences. Altogether, more than 4000 universities were evaluated. Charles University placed among the top 500 schools in 20 subjects, Palacký and Masaryk universities in six, and Czech Technical University in five.

UP, as usual, placed highest in the natural sciences. Its best placements were in physics and agricultural science, in both cases placing in the category between the 201st and 300th positions. In physics, Charles University (76th to 100th positions) and CTU (151st to 200th) were best, while Masaryk University did not place in the top 500 schools.

Olomouc researchers had high marks in biological sciences (301st to 400th positions) along with Masaryk University, while Charles University placed between the 201st to 300th positions.

UP also placed in the top 500 schools in chemistry, environmental sciences, and pharmaceutical science. For example in chemistry, the only other Czech university on the list was Charles University. Detailed information and ranking tables are available HERE.

University | overall placing | number of placements in individual fields

Charles University Prague | 201st–300th | 20

Palacký University Olomouc | 601st–700th | 6

Masaryk University Brno | 601st–700th | 6

Czech Technical University | 601st–700th | 5

ARWU focusses primarily on academic and research levels of institutions

ARWU uses six indicators for evaluating world universities, including the number of articles published in the magazines Nature and Science and publications cited by others. Emphasis is placed on the excellence of academic performance.

“Palacký University is now found on all of the Big Three global rankings, which confirms its solid position among world universities. The Shanghai Ranking uses a different method than the other rankings, it also takes into account data from the Highly Cited Researchers database, the number of Nobel prize-winners, and more,” said Zuzana Polanská, the head of International Strategy at UP. She added that this ranking is the only one out of the Big Three that works with data from Clarivate Analytics (formerly Thomson Reuters), while THE and QS for several years now have been analysing data from the Elsevier company’s database. The Shanghai Ranking can be found HERE.

In first place on the 2017 ARWU, the same as last year, is Harvard University, followed by Stanford University. The dominance of American universities in the top ten is broken by the University of Cambridge in third place, and the University of Oxford in 7th place.

Palacký University celebrated another first in connection with ARWU. In the ranking of universities in sports, the Shanghai Ranking put the UP Faculty of Physical Culture in the category between 101st and 150th place, which represents the best placing of any Czech university in that category.